My Checmical Romance stream unheard Black Parade song despite there being reunion rumours. The guys did eventually release The Black Parade / Living With Ghosts which was a ten year anniversary of the The Black Parade.

It’s been a long road for LAZLO, having taken 5 years of developing to get to the point of releasing their debut EP ‘Time Honoured’. In this time the band have gigged with an array of successful bands including Feeder and The Pigeon Detectives.

The band premiered an official music video for the latest single from the EP yesterday. You can can watch it below!

Frontman Roy Williamson commented on the release:

‘It’s a track we wanted maximum impact.

‘The video was filmed in Hull, a location we chose specifically for its potency of beautiful landscapes mixed with urban decay.

‘We wanted the song to extend a narrative about poverty, about morals, about friendship.

‘Videos to me are a chance to flirt with another universe to create something brand new.

‘It’s involving us in something else.

‘The way that works is I like finding people that are really excited and hungry to make something.

‘I love the idea of our song being a vehicle for whatever their passionate thing is that they want to get out’

He continued: ‘Having the opportunity to act in the video was really awesome but also it was a real eye opener walking around the city as a homeless person and witnessing the public’s reaction, I went for a coffee at one point on my own and the two ladies serving me were instantly dubious of me as a character.

‘At least until I started to speak and be affable towards them. Then I think they were just a little bit confused.’

(Brooklyn, NY) The story of Brooklyn born and raised prog-punk band Sister Helen reaches as far back as pre-school for Eva Lawitts (bass/vox) and Clint Mobley (drums). Officially forming in 2003 while the two lifelong friends were in middle school, Sister Helen would add Nathan J. Campbell (lead vox) in 8th grade and Chris Krasnow (guitar/vox) in 10th.

Having lived full lives as DIY musicians, despite still being so young, and with Campbell due to move to Istanbul, Sister Helen is now preparing to release a final, self-titled concept album due out January 13th.

With humble beginnings that stretch from all ages gigs at Liberty Heights Tap Room to present day, Sister Helen has been at the forefront of challenging, underground rock having been a played countless venues come and gone in the ever evolving NYC landscape. Touring the country on self booked tours in recent years, the band hit a collective breaking point having pushed each other to the brink. It was this desperate energy going into the studio knowing they were recording their swan song that informs the dark, dynamic sounds and concepts across the 12 tracks.

We managed to catch up with the band as they talked about parting ways, their new album, proudest moment and more!

Soit’sbeennearly15yearssinceyouformed, how does it feel to be partingways?

Chris Krasnow: With this new record taking the amount of time that it has, it’s slowly starting to seem like a sigh of relief, although it does confuse me to think about the future without Sister Helen

Eva Lawitts: Right now I feel a little relieved to be rid our ridiculous touring schedule, a little sad to be ending a musical project that I feel had so much more potential, and a little confused about every other aspect of the break-up. 15years is a long time, this is easily the longest relationship of my life so…ask me again in February maybe.

Soyou are bringing out your self-titled album, are you looking forward to fans hearing it?

EL: I am looking forward to people hearing it, but I guess I’m more looking forward to knowing that people who have always supported us will have something to remember this band by. This album means a lot to us and we took the time to do it right. In that regard, I hope it’s received in a way that makes the effort feel worth it, but I’ll be proud of it no matter what.

CK: I think this is definitely our best album to date, we’re older and more refined. The songs are more refined now too, but they keep the same intensity level that we’re known for.

Tell us a little about the album

CK: Eva and Nathan can tell you more about the concept, but on the production side of things, we took our time trying to really get the album to sound and feel right as opposed to our earlier albums, where school and living in different cities gave us more drastic deadlines. Things sound warmer and more natural on this album.

EL: The concept for the album started forming in 2012 or so, when Nathan started writing lyrics for Sense of Self and Forest Fire. Around that time I had this vague sort of idea that they should be bookends to a concept album. Some of the songs are from all the way back in 2012 and some of them were written during the 2 year period where we were constantly on tour. Between the kinds of things that were inspiring Chris and I, and the lyrics Nathan was naturally writing, the lifestyle we were living, it started to become more apparent what the album was about, and then we started making things more deliberate, adding certain themes, lyrics, interludes, references into the songs on purpose. The album doesn’t really have a narrative, but it circles around two characters, one who is in dire need of help and support, and one who feels helpless in providing that support, and enraged by his own impotence. Different angles of their relationship are examined in each song.

How has the release of ‘Friend’ gone down so far?

EL: It’s going well. Friend was a big departure from pretty much everything else we’ve ever put out, a big stylistic change…it seems like a lot of people were surprised by it. Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro is not our usual M.O., but most of what I’ve seen is positive feedback about the emotional content of it, the power of the chorus and the lyrics and so forth.

So your last show is in Brooklyn in January, how emotional will this be for you guys?

CK: Almost as emotional as the 2015 World Series, fitting to have it at Shea Stadium haaa.

EL: Ha. Depends on how many people show up I guess. I don’t think I can really imagine what it will be like to look out over a crowd and know that the next song we play will be the last time the four of us ever play music together. It’ll probably be bittersweet, like this whole process has been.

What has been your proudest moment as a band?

CK: That time we played a show when we were 19 and everyone in the audience was dancing and jumping off the walls and then everyone took all their clothes off. I honestly think my most recent proudest moment was listening to the final masters of this record.

EL: For me, maybe the first day of our first really big tour…or maybe the day we came home. I felt like after almost a decade, we were finally a “real” band, y’know? I remember being really proud of a show we did at The Drunken Unicorn in Atlanta in 2015. I was delirious with joy working the merch table that night. Maybe I was proudest of the album we put out when we were 15 though, it’s hard to say.

What was your funniest moment?

CK: Definitely every moment on tour off stage. What a funny bunch of guys we are.

EL: Um. One time we got scammed out of some money in Alabama, and we were just having a really bad night. We went to a huddle house somewhere near the Georgia border and we couldn’t stop laughing. Chris said he thought the name of Who Framed Roger Rabbit was “yo, who da FUCK robbert rabbert!?” That might be solidified in my mind as the hardest I’ve ever laughed on tour. We were so tired…

The next day our van broke down in Nashville and we were stranded there for four days. That was funny too.

Is there any chance at all you will reform one day?

CK: Nathan’s just going to Istanbul to smuggle back nice hand hammered ago cymbals, so the quicker his hands are, the faster we’ll return.

EL: On the other hand, Nathan can’t even walk across a room without losing his keys and his wallet and his passport, so it seems unlikely. But the world is chaos and i guess anything is possible

How much does your fans mean to you guys?

CK: A lot. Even if we feel we’ve had some bad shows in our run, the emotional return from our fans is always super high and I’m, happy we can reach them no matter what.

EL: I’ll just say…if you‘ve ever seen us play anywhere, if you‘ve ever listened to our music and thought it was any good, then I owe my life to you.

Conducting the affairs of the festival and hosting the event is alternative tattoo model Femke Fatale.

To help add to the line-up, the festival have launched a Battle of the Bands for an unsigned act to join the world-class billing. Three battles, eight bands, and one winner. The three events are to be held on 28th January, 11th February and 25th February [for more information see the poster below.]

The festival are also delighted to announce hotel discounts in partnership with Tune Hotel. Use the discount code HEAVYSCOT when booking to receive a 15% discount, valid from 30 March – 3 April inclusive.

Set to be the biggest and best new festival dedicated to all things dark, heavy, and vicious, Heavy Scotland is borne out of a love of metal. Aimed at supporting a famously dedicated metal scene but until now without a big festival, Heavy Scotland looks set to put Scotland on the map.

With the shock news of Team Rock going into administration and 73 staff terminated with immediate effect, without pay, right before Christmas, the music community has united and raised a fantastic amount of money to help the staff.

15 bands from the Rage PR roster decided they wanted to use their music to give something back, and the result is the ‘UNITED WE STAND’ compilation.

For as little as £1* people can donate to this fantastic cause and also snag themselves 15 great tracks. The release is only being sold through Bandcamp and utilises their ‘pay what you want’ technology, meaning if people can afford to donate more, they can.

100% of proceeds received from sales will go to the main fundraising effort created by Ben Ward (Orange Goblin).

Dutch progressive music festival COMPLEXITY FEST have announced the next batch of bands set to play on 25 February in Haarlem, Netherlands.

Canadian extreme tech-death savages CRYPTOPSY are set to appear at the festival alongside legendary death metallers SUFFOCATION. Icelandic prog wizards AGENT FRESCO, French atmospheric rockers UNEVEN STRUCTURE and Zurich technical death metal mavericks VIRVUM have also been added to the already stacked bill; they are joined by math/prog duo AIMING FOR ENRIKE (Tobias Ørnes Andersen of Leprous / Shining), French electronic artist RUBY MY DEAR, and instrumentalists MNHM.

Stay tuned for more acts to be announced as they come.
Line-up so far:

BORDERLINE SYNDROME is an ever evolving instrumental quartet from Athens/Greece that performs progressive experimental heavy music. Their music draws elements from progressive and math rock to post metal and contemporary jazz. Since their first self-
released album (stateless, 2012) they changed their line-up, former singer Sofia Sarri left the band and Loukas Giannakitsas became their new bassist.

Experimenting with larger scale compositions, structured more like a short film rather than a pop song and incorporating new elements such as South Indian rhythms and extreme sound manipulation, they formed and recorded (spring 2015) the material that comprises their 2nd release SYNAPSES.Intricate rhythmic patterns, dark escalating harmonies and minimalistic melodies along with some heavy math riffs and dramatic breakdowns characterize their new sound.

We managed to catch up with the band as they talk about their latest EP, favourite song, fans and more!

So how has the EP Synapses gone?

‘SYNAPSES’ EP is kind of a newborn, so we are at the process of seeing how it will go henceforward. The feedback we’ve got till now seems really good, and that makes us very proud and motivated. We are more than anxious to see the continuation.

How long did it take you to make this EP?

It took us a while… During our first album ‘stateless’, we had a singer who left the band after the release. So, it was crucial for us to have a good two-years-period to work on our new sound as an instrumental quartet.

Tell us a little bit about the release.

As I said before ‘SYNAPSES’ is our first release as an instrumental band, which means that we had to face new unprecedented challenges when we composed the album tracks.It is a whole different story to compose songs (with the convenience that during the singing parts there is a certain “leader” in the orchestration), compared to instrumental tracks (especially since we do not have many solos and we do not follow the post-rock patterns).

Of course, the whole procedure has been extremely intriguing and we enjoyed it a lot!

What is your favourite song from the EP?

That’s a really tough question. I am really proud of this EP, as I think it is a good reflection of ourselves at this certain period of time with all its variations sound-wise and temper-wise. If I forced myself to pick one track, I would say the opening track ‘INTERNALIZE’, as it sums up most of the elements of our (new) sound.

Will there be a full album released next year?

Probably not, I would say. We will do what we always do; release new stuff when we are satisfied with the music we have (in hand). One could say that we are kind of ‘perfectionists’.

Are you guys going on tour at all next year?

We will go on a Greek tour next year and we plan to examine the possibility of a European tour by the end of 2017.

If you could work with any band on a new song who would it be and why?

Well, at this exact period, my answer would be Metallica… I would be more than happy tofollow their process during the production of a recording. I think there would be lots of things to learn by that. Strictly for composing a new track, perhaps I would like to work with Aphex Twin or Autechre, as I imagine they would add new layers to our sound. Of course, being an instrumental band, it would be really interesting to work with a singer on a new song. Bjork is the first name that comes to mind.

How much does your fans mean to you guys?

The whole concept behind the band is just 4 individuals trying to express their aesthetics and mentality through music. In that sense, our fans are the group of people who seem to relate to our music, therefore to us. So, we feel each one of them as a potential friend, since we have discovered we have some things in common.

What been your proudest moment to date?

I’d say the band’s resuscitation after overleaping some tough times, spending endless hours of rehearsing, reconsidering and figuring out our musical existence as an instrumental quartet and as a whole entity.

What has been your funniest moment to date?

Well… There are quite a lot of funny moments, but you should definitely watch us talking… big egos ‘arguing’ about a crucial band matter . It’s funny, laborious but integrative, as well!

Rising electro-rockers This BurningAge have released their new single Ab Aeterno (From Forever), the closing track from their acclaimed EP Desolation. The epic new song is a hypnotic, intricate epic that moves from beautifully sparse verses into a pounding, widescreen, cathartic rock finale.

Influenced by a wide range of musical heavyweights like Bowie, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana, This BurningAge make music that demands the attention of your ears, heart and head – aggressive, unpredictable, adventurous alt-metal with lyrics exploring love, sex, death and the human condition that offer no easy answers.

With rave reviews across alternative and metal media, radio support from BBC Introducing and a string of sellout shows in their hometown of rock mecca Birmingham, This BurningAge look set to be making connections and pushing boundaries for years to come.

You can check out the single below!

We managed to catch up with This Burning Age as they talk about the new video, new tour, proudest moment and more!

So how has video of Ab Aeterno (From Forever) gone down so far?

We’re really pleased with the reception so far. Our existing fan-base seems to love it, we’re seeing new fans come into the fold every day since the release and we’ve been lucky enough to have had some great responses from both the UK and US media. All in all, we’re incredibly happy with how it’s been received.

Tell us a little bit about the song (meaning/concept etc).

If you wanted to keep it short and sweet, you might describe the over-arching themes of all four EP’s as “love, sex, death and the human condition”. It’s a lot more than that but you wouldn’t be far off the mark. I’m loathe to pick apart too much of the meaning behind Ab as it came about during a very difficult time in my life. The Japanese have the word “Mono No Aware” (物の哀れ) – it describes the particular sadness or sensitivity regarding the passage of time and the transience of life. At the time I was very focused on the ability to simultaneously experience two diametrically opposed emotions – for example sorrow (some might say desolation) and elation. And that, as you might say, was that.

Would you say this is your favourite track from the Desolation EP?

It could well be my favorite of anything I’ve ever written. I genuinely mean that. At the very least I think it might be the track I’m proudest of.

Who do you most admire in music and why?

At the risk of being accused of shameless band-wagon-jumping, it’s Bowie. Always has been and probably always will be. He was fearless – merging genres, pushing limits, blurring the lines between music and art – absolutely fearless. And Jesus, he could write music to make your heart sing.

What’s it like being supported by BBC Introducing?

To be noticed by someone, anyone, for the music you write is a pretty amazing thing. I’m not seeking validation for what I do (if I wanted that then, let’s face it, I should probably be making music in far more media-friendly genres) but I’d be a barefaced liar if I said being acknowledged by a brand like BBC Introducing, who are such a positive force for showcasing unsigned and self-signed acts, wasn’t utterly fantastic. I hope they continue to like what we do!

What has been the band’s proudest moment to date?

Listening to the final synth fade to silence in the dying seconds of the last track on our soon-to-be-released fourth and final EP, late one night back in September at Monochrome Productions, the studio where we’ve recorded every track in the cycle. The end of four amazing years of work.

Will there be a UK tour soon?

Two in fact. We’re organising two short tours to coincide with the release of EP04 and the final album. So, as they say, watch this space.